Different infrastructure for a different boundary.
Actae does not replace your agent framework, and it is not simply ‘better than Temporal.’ It is a narrower fit for teams that need to fork a real execution — fork from a saved step, change the next decision, and compare the outcome — on framework-neutral durable state.
| Capability | Actae | Observability tools | Workflow engines | Postgres + queues |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Agent-state fork, lineage, and diff | First-class product primitives | Trace comparison | Can be implemented | You build it |
| Fork without re-firing a side effect | First-class (tool policies: replay / block / live / auto) | No | Can be implemented | You build it |
| Replay history into live stream | One abstraction | Trace ingestion | Workflow history | You build it |
| Who owns application control flow? | Application/framework | Observational only | Workflow runtime executes the durable workflow definition | Application |
| What does the infrastructure persist? | Explicit execution events, state boundaries, operation records, and lineage | Traces | Workflow history used to reconstruct and drive execution | Events you design |
| Does adoption require a workflow execution model? | No | No | Yes — durable application control flow is expressed through the workflow model | No |
| Best fit | Long-running, tool-using agents | LLM quality and observability | Broad business workflows | Teams wanting full control |
Every one of these can resume.
They differ in what the fork is anchored to.
Crash recovery is now table stakes — Temporal, Inngest, Restate, DBOS, and a framework checkpointer all provide it. What still differs is the boundary: an exact logical agent step with inherited state and an immutable receipt (Actae) versus a workflow-history event, a memoized step, or a framework checkpoint.
| Option | Best when | Trade-off for agents |
|---|---|---|
| Actae | Agents with real side effects that need exact-step forks, framework neutrality, and auditable lineage — free self-hosted or managed Cloud. | Younger product; no public SLA yet; assisted onboarding. |
| Temporal | A mature general workflow engine should own the application lifecycle at scale. | Durable logic is expressed as Workflows and Activities, so the agent loop runs inside the workflow model. Reset/fork is workflow-history level. |
| Inngest | Event-driven durable steps and agent loops with strong DX, plus built-in evals and experiments. | Run/step checkpointing and memoization, but no fork-with-inherited-state or cross-framework lineage primitive. |
| Restate | Durable RPC and virtual objects; sessions with built-in concurrency control. | General-purpose journaling; agent-specific forking, lineage, and structural state diff are yours to build. |
| DBOS | You already run Postgres and want an in-process library with no orchestrator, including workflow fork and lineage. | Library plus decorators; no framework-neutral substrate, immutable fork receipts, or structural state diff. |
| LangGraph checkpointers | You are all-in on LangGraph and need native resume, time travel, and checkpoint forks. | Framework-bound; no cross-framework coordination; checkpoints record state, not external effects. |
| Postgres + queues | Control is the point and the team will own ordering, leases, idempotency, and recovery. | You build the parts that bite: lease fencing, idempotency-key lifetime, and the ambiguous window where an effect landed but nothing recorded it. |
These products and their agent capabilities change quickly. Verify each cell against current vendor documentation before relying on it. See the full comparison write-up for the reasoning behind each row. You can judge the fork boundary yourself on your own machine — download the free self-hosted build.
Choose Actae when
Runs are long or costly, side effects matter, framework neutrality matters, and forking real inherited state is valuable.
Choose something else when
You only need traces, your chatbot runs for seconds, or a general workflow engine already owns the entire application lifecycle.